May 2019

It was a typical Monday afternoon.

My 2nd-grade student came bounding into the room, full of questions and things to tell me since I’d seen him last.

He sat down on the bench, eager to play an arrangement of “Sweet Molly Malone,” a piece I suggested last week might be good for our end-of-year recital.

Slowly, he made his way through, wincing out loud every time he missed a note. When he finished, I complimented him on his thorough practicing this week and offered a few suggestions:

"Listen for smooth, connected playing and feel that steady heartbeat all the way through," I said. He sighed.

Begrudgingly, he placed his hands back on the keys and began again. 

Mostly, he played the same way he just had, getting more exasperated with each missed finger, each forgotten half note. Halfway through, he stopped abruptly, crossed his arms, and declared, “This cannot be my recital piece.” 

“Why not?” I asked. “I’ve made too many mistakes,” he said. His voice caught in his throat. “Who said you made too many mistakes?” I asked. “You can make as many mistakes as you need to - that’s part of learning.” 

He was not convinced. “I can only make three mistakes,” he said with resolve. His face softened as I sat down next to the piano. “I couldn't stay for the party after the recital last year because I made too many mistakes,” he said quietly. 

Perhaps he misunderstood the situation, I thought. Perhaps these were self-imposed expectations. 

Regardless, I could certainly relate to what he was feeling. We all can, right? 

We know what it feels like to aim for perfection and keep falling short; to prove our worth to feel accepted, to be loved. 

How often do we feel perfection is what God asks of us? How often do we inadvertently pass this expectation on to those we teach? How often do we, in a moment of frustration, cross our arms and say, “I can’t do this - I’ve made too many mistakes”? 

The truth is, “Many of us think of our big mistakes as disqualifying us; God sees them as preparing us.” (Bob Goff, Everybody, Always) 

We tend to think of failure as the end of the road; but the word mistake actually means “an action or judgment that is misguided; a miscalculation” - like a GPS that’s momentarily lost its signal. It’s a detour, an opportunity to explore an alternate route.

Learning something new always involves risk and uncertainty: there’s a chance we won’t get it or be able to do it right away, and that’s a good thing. This is how we develop courage and creativity, learning to experiment without expectation and live without fear. This is how we discover and create things we couldn’t have predicted at the start. 

The legendary jazz pianist Dave Brubeck once said, "There's a way of playing safe, there's a way of using tricks and there's the way I like to play which is dangerously where you're going to take a chance on making mistakes in order to create something you haven't created before."

This is part of the process, and we are better for it. 

The truth is, God isn't counting our mistakes, measuring our worth based on our achievements. I believe God is off-stage, cheering us on and telling us to keep playing. And so, with a spirit of curiosity and tenacity, we try again, we fail again, we create, we discover, we learn.

// 

I looked my young student in the eye that day and said, “I’m so sorry to hear that. But I want you to know, it's okay to make mistakes. It's not about playing perfectly, it’s about celebrating how far you’ve come and all that you’ve learned this year. Let’s try this piece again, together.”

We’re not alone, friends. Let’s trade perfectionism for a spirit of curiosity and adventure and see where the journey takes us.

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